Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/411

Rh all the year (for this purpose, as I believe), and in the Black Country it was formerly used to decorate churches. Mr. Lawley quotes entries of payments for mistletoe for this purpose from churchwardens' accounts at Bilston in 1672 and Darlaston in 1801. About three years ago an oak-tree in the old deerpark at Hanbury (in Needwood) was struck by lightning, and people came from all round to get pieces of the injured wood, to keep as charms to preserve their houses from a similar misfortune. At Eccleshall, on the other side of the county, a piece of hawthorn gathered on Ascension Day is the proper thing for this purpose, as I have heard more than once. A yeoman farmer's wife there tells me that it must be brought to you, not gathered on your own ground. She has a piece brought to her every year, and hangs it with her own hands among the rafters in the "cock-loft," which is now nearly full of these charms. She is an excellent authority for old customs, belonging as she does to a family so old that it is celebrated in a local rhyme or prophecy:

I do not know what the Needwood people say to hawthorn, but they think it most unlucky to bring blackthorn into the house. A family with whom one of the minor rangerships of the forest has been hereditary for many generations were much annoyed not long since when a young lady new to the district brought a piece into their house. A friend of mine at Hanbury one day gathered a particularly fine piece, which she gave to the garden-boy to take up to the house for her daughter; but the latter never received it.

Then there are in various places curious reminiscences of forest-rights. Dr. Plot, writing in 1686, mentions a certain oak-tree near Tirley Castle on the Shropshire border, under whose boughs offences against manorial and ecclesiastical law might be committed without rendering the